My supposition is that a contributing factor is probably that this location is part of the world in which, by some estimates, 30% of reviews and posts of products and services are by people in some way compensated to boost one offering and disparage a competitor's.

Web/blog reviews, possibly, but not your average web board posting. I was on bulletin board systems before there was a world-wide-web, and there was this same troll behavior where some people just like to get a rise out of others by finding something to pick on. The rudeness is there already, willingly handed out.

There were also some awful "flame wars" regarding computers, videogame consoles, etc. The debates between Amiga and Atari ST were often particularly mean, even though they were very similar machines, and yet both of those systems failed. If this was considered successful marketing, perhaps the definition of success needs to be revisited.

Everyone knows that these types of long term campaigns are an extremely cost effective form of "advertising" and are very hard to identify for posting sites. Although such practices are technically illegal in the US,...